[Illustration:  BATTLEFIELD OF COLENSO, DECEMBER 15, 1899 1 GENERAL LOUIS BOTHA’S COMMANDO 2 BOKSBURG COMMANDO 3 COLENSO 4 KRUGERSDORP COMMANDO 5 WAKKERSTROM COMMANDO 6 ERMELO COMMANDO 7 SWAZILAND POLICE 8 ERMELO COMMANDO 9 BRITISH CAMP, CHIEVELY
10 TUGELA RIVER]

“When my father is injured or killed, I will take his rifle,” was his excuse for being away from home.  When General De Wet captured seven cannon from the enemy at the battle of Sannaspost two of the volunteers to operate them were boys aged respectively fourteen and fifteen years.  Pieter J. Henning, of the Potchefstroom commando, who was injured in the battle of Scholtznek on December 11th, was less than fifteen years old, yet his valour in battle was as conspicuous as that of any of the burghers who took part in the engagement.  Teunis H.C.  Mulder, of the Pretoria commando, celebrated his sixteenth birthday only a few days before he was twice wounded at Ladysmith on November 9th, and Willem Francois Joubert, a relative of the Commandant-General, was only fifteen years old when he was wounded at Ladysmith on October 30th.  At the battle of Koedoesrand, fifteen-year-old Pieter de Jager, of the Bethlehem commando, was seriously injured by a shell while he was conveying his injured father from the field.  With the army of General Cronje captured at Paardeberg were no less than a hundred burghers who had not reached the sixteenth year, and among those who escaped from the laager in the river-bed were two Bloemfontein boys named Roux, aged twelve and fourteen years.  At Colenso a Wakkerstroom youth of twelve years captured three English scouts and compelled them to march ahead of him to the commandant’s tent.  During one of the lulls in the fighting at Magersfontein a burgher of fifteen years crept up to within twenty yards of three British soldiers and shouted “Hands up!” Thinking that there were other Boers in the vicinity the men dropped their guns and became prisoners of the boy, who took them to General De la Rey’s tent.  When the General asked the boy how he secured the prisoners the lad replied, nonchalantly, “Oh, I surrounded them.”  These youths who accompanied the commando were known as the “Penkop Regiment”—­a regiment composed of school children—­and in their connection an amusing story has been current in the Boer country ever since the war of 1881, when large numbers of children less than fifteen years old went with their fathers to battle.  The story is that after the fight at Majuba Hill, while the peace negotiations were in progress, Sir Evelyn Wood, the Commander of the British forces, asked General Joubert to see the famous Penkop Regiment.  The Boer General gave an order that the regiment should be drawn up in a line before his tent, and when this had been done General Joubert led General Wood into the open and introduced him to the corps.  Sir Evelyn was sceptical for some time, and imagined that General Joubert was joking, but when it was explained to him that the youths really were the much-vaunted Penkop Regiment he advised them to return to their school-books.